1867Preface to theFirst German Edition

The work, the first volume of which I now submit to
the public, forms the continuation of my Zur Kritik der Politischen
Oekonomie (A Contribution to the Criticism of Political
Economy) published in 1859. The long pause between the first part and the
continuation is due to an illness of many years’ duration that again and
again interrupted my work.

The substance of that earlier work is summarised in the first three
chapters of this volume. This is done not merely for the sake of connexion
and completeness. The presentation of the subject matter is improved. As
far as circumstances in any way permit, many points only hinted at in the
earlier book are here worked out more fully, whilst, conversely, points
worked out fully there are only touched upon in this volume. The sections
on the history of the theories of value and of money are now, of course,
left out altogether. The reader of the earlier work will find, however,
in the notes to the first chapter additional sources of reference relative
to the history of those theories.

Every beginning is difficult, holds in all sciences. To understand the
first chapter, especially the section that contains the analysis of commodities,
will, therefore, present the greatest difficulty. That which concerns more
especially the analysis of the substance of value and the magnitude of
value, I have, as much as it was possible, popularised.
[1] The value-form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very
elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000
years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it all, whilst on the other
hand, to the successful analysis of much more composite and complex forms,
there has been at least an approximation. Why? Because the body, as an
organic whole, is more easy of study than are the cells of that body. In
the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical
reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both. But in
bourgeois society, the commodity-form of the product of labour — or value-form
of the commodity — is the economic cell-form. To the superficial observer,
the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact
deal with minutiae, but they are of the same order as those dealt with
in microscopic anatomy.

With the exception of the section of value-form, therefore, this volume
cannot stand accused on the score of difficulty. I presuppose, of course,
a reader who is willing to learn something new and therefore to think for
himself.

The physicist either observes physical phenomena where they occur in
their most typical form and most free from disturbing influence, or, wherever
possible, he makes experiments under conditions that assure the occurrence
of the phenomenon in its normality. In this work I have to examine the
capitalist mode of production, and the conditions of production and exchange
corresponding to that mode. Up to the present time, their classic ground
is England. That is the reason why England is used as the chief illustration
in the development of my theoretical ideas. If, however, the German reader
shrugs his shoulders at the condition of the English industrial and agricultural
labourers, or in optimist fashion comforts himself with the thought that
in Germany things are not nearly so bad; I must plainly tell him, “De te
fabula narratur!” [It is of you that the story is told. – Horace]

Intrinsically, it is not a question of the higher or lower degree
of development of the social antagonisms that result from the natural laws
of capitalist production. It is a question of these laws themselves, of
these tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevitable results.
The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less
developed, the image of its own future.

But apart from this. Where capitalist production is fully naturalised
among the Germans (for instance, in the factories proper) the condition
of things is much worse than in England, because the counterpoise of the
Factory Acts is wanting. In all other spheres, we, like all the rest of
Continental Western Europe, suffer not only from the development of capitalist
production, but also from the incompleteness of that development. Alongside
the modern evils, a whole series of inherited evils oppress us, arising
from the passive survival of antiquated modes of production, with their
inevitable train of social and political anachronisms. We suffer not only
from the living, but from the dead. Le mort saisit le vif![The dead holds the living in his grasp. – formula of French common law]

The social statistics of Germany and the rest of Continental Western
Europe are, in comparison with those of England, wretchedly compiled. But
they raise the veil just enough to let us catch a glimpse of the Medusa
head behind it. We should be appalled at the state of things at home, if,
as in England, our governments and parliaments appointed periodically commissions
of inquiry into economic conditions; if these commissions were armed with
the same plenary powers to get at the truth; if it was possible to find
for this purpose men as competent, as free from partisanship and respect
of persons as are the English factory-inspectors, her medical reporters
on public health, her commissioners of inquiry into the exploitation of
women and children, into housing and food. Perseus wore a magic cap down
over his eyes and ears as a make-believe that there are no monsters.

Let us not deceive ourselves on this. As in the 18th century, the American
war of independence sounded the tocsin for the European middle class, so
that in the 19th century, the American Civil War sounded it for the European
working class. In England the process of social disintegration is palpable.
When it has reached a certain point, it must react on the Continent. There
it will take a form more brutal or more humane, according to the degree
of development of the working class itself. Apart from higher motives,
therefore, their own most important interests dictate to the classes that
are for the nonce the ruling ones, the removal of all legally removable
hindrances to the free development of the working class. For this reason,
as well as others, I have given so large a space in this volume to the
history, the details, and the results of English factory legislation. One
nation can and should learn from others. And even when a society has got
upon the right track for the discovery of the natural laws of its movement
— and it is the ultimate aim of this work, to lay bare the economic law
of motion of modern society — it can neither clear by bold leaps, nor
remove by legal enactments, the obstacles offered by the successive phases
of its normal development. But it can shorten and lessen the birth-pangs.

To prevent possible misunderstanding, a word. I paint the capitalist and
the landlord in no sense couleur de rose[i.e., seen through rose-tinted glasses]. But here individuals are
dealt with only in so far as they are the personifications of economic
categories, embodiments of particular class-relations and class-interests.
My standpoint, from which the evolution of the economic formation of society
is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make
the individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains,
however much he may subjectively raise himself above them.

In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not
merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of
the materials it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the
most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies
of private interest. The English Established Church, e.g., will more readily
pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on 1/39 of its income. Now-a-days
atheism is culpa levis[a relatively slight sin, c.f. mortal sin], as compared with criticism of existing property
relations. Nevertheless, there is an unmistakable advance. I refer, e.g.,
to the Blue book published within the last few weeks: “Correspondence with
Her Majesty’s Missions Abroad, regarding Industrial Questions and Trades’
Unions.” The representatives of the English Crown in foreign countries
there declare in so many words that in Germany, in France, to be brief,
in all the civilised states of the European Continent, radical change in
the existing relations between capital and labour is as evident and inevitable
as in England. At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean,
Mr. Wade, vice-president of the United States, declared in public meetings
that, after the abolition of slavery, a radical change of the relations
of capital and of property in land is next upon the order of the day. These
are signs of the times, not to be hidden by purple mantles or black cassocks.
They do not signify that tomorrow a miracle will happen. They show that,
within the ruling classes themselves, a foreboding is dawning, that the
present society is no solid crystal, but an organism capable of change,
and is constantly changing.

The second volume of this book will treat of the process of the circulation
of capital (Book II.), and of the varied forms assumed by capital in the
course of its development (Book III.), the third and last volume (Book
IV.), the history of the theory.

Every opinion based on scientific criticism I welcome. As to prejudices
of so-called public opinion, to which I have never made concessions, now
as aforetime the maxim of the great Florentine is mine:

Footnotes

[1] This is the more necessary, as even the
section of Ferdinand Lassalle’s work against Schulze-Delitzsch, in which
he professes to give “the intellectual quintessence” of my explanations
on these subjects, contains important mistakes. If Ferdinand Lassalle has
borrowed almost literally from my writings, and without any acknowledgement,
all the general theoretical propositions in his economic works, e.g., those
on the historical character of capital, on the connexion between the conditions
of production and the mode of production, &c., &c., even to the
terminology created by me, this may perhaps be due to purposes of propaganda.
I am here, of course, not speaking of his detailed working out and application
of these propositions, with which I have nothing to do.